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actias-android · 4 days ago

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Ah, I see. It's not so much that I'm presenting a complete framework. It's absolutely not complete. It's a template at best. A real framework for this is, I think, something that an individual (loosely as I'm a system but you get it) can't just build in a vacuum. It would have to be something that comes about as a whole lot of people experiment with the template, figure out how it works in practical usage, and adjust as they go. I think it would need to develop in response to that kind of thing. I'm just me and I can't possibly come up with an idea that's going to account for everyone's different situations. So I think we're not even necessarily in disagreement, because I'm seeing it as a complete enough template for a framework, and you're looking for the full framework which is well beyond me to develop (and I think trying to, without anybody else's needs or input or lived experience, would be a useless and kind of shitty thing to do).

But you're right. It doesn't really address "how to talk to people whose reality is considered 'Bad' by consensus reality" and honestly, I don't know how to address that beyond saying that everyone's gotta individually decolonize their thinking, which isn't a very satisfying or solid answer. So I erred on the side of not approaching it, but it's there and open for anybody else to develop further.

It would be better, in my opinion to not say there is no universal truth, but instead that the concept of a universal truth exists and is different for other people- and that it can effect the degree to which other people understand your singular personal reality. There is not a Consensus we can put aside to eliminate misunderstanding, rather an infinite number of Consensus-es that inform others by virtue of them living/existing in them to various degrees, and we must be courteous to those clearly wanting to participate.

This is definitely true and I think part of how philosophy always gets kind of shaky when the rubber actually hits the road. In putting it into a simplified explanation to get the general idea across, you lose nuance like this. Consensus reality also isn't one existing, singular, real thing. It's a statistical sample, and even just your sample size will change it drastically. The consensus reality of the Amish is necessarily going to be very different than the consensus reality of a bunch of foreign national tech employees in a city. None of them are wrong, life really is Like That for the people in them, but none of them are universal. You can increase the sample size until they're all within it, and that's a different consensus, but now it's one that neither of these groups actually live in.

The most important thing, and you absolutely nailed it, is that we must be courteous to those who want to participate. It's hard to shake off the blinders that your local consensus reality puts onto you. If someone's really trying in good faith, good enough. That's basically the core of the idea anyway.

This is going to be a little long and a lot philosophical, but bear with me, y'all.

Lemme propose a little (actually very big) paradigm shift in how we talk about the validity and understanding of experiences, especially others' experiences.

So to understand exactly what I'm proposing, I'm going to start briefly with how it is now.

This is meant to be taken on a general nonhuman community level, just to be clear, and isn't meant to promote anti-science views or anything outside of the intended topic; this is a philosophical construct for the purpose of discussing philosophical topics of being other-than-human.

There's Reality, which is considered to be something you can prove that we all take part in whether we like it or not, and Experience, which is considered to take place in Reality, and yet be subjective to the one experiencing it and their interpretation. (Capital letters to set these concepts apart from the usual usage of the terms.) In Reality, you can Experience being nonhuman, but since you cannot prove in any way to anyone else that you really are nonhuman, you are, basically, at the whim of others' interpretations of your Experience, and Reality functionally does not include this Experience because of its unprovability.

Now this is a realist approach, and it's largely functional for most day to day purposes, but when it comes to philosophical Experiences that are absolutely true to us, even though they run directly counter to someone else's Experiences...you can, probably, see how the realist approach breaks down rapidly and engenders poor faith arguments over believability instead of conversation about substance.

This isn't just a nonhuman/Otherkin/therian/etc. thing either, I've watched the same devolution happen in pagan spheres, in witchcraft spheres, even in gender and orientation spheres...literally anywhere you have intense, internal, personal Experience as a basis for a community, this breakdown will happen. It's unavoidable with the current paradigm, which proposes a One True And Correct Reality, from which is derived judgement on whether or not any given Experience is acceptable or not.

I propose we throw the whole-ass paradigm in the dumpster and start again.

Instead of understanding there to be only one shared reality between all of us, and that some of us must therefore be mistaken with regards to how it works regardless of our own experiences, I propose that instead, we understand that (in the context of engaging with the unknown, anyway, this is meant to be philosophical and not anti-science as I said before) there is Consensus Reality, and Specific Reality. This is an idealistic philosophy, and I think it's potentially a lot more useful in how we approach comparing and contrasting being other-than-human.

Consensus Reality is what we generally live in...sort of. It's a vague average of all the individual Specific Realities that people actually experience. Consensus Reality is influenced by culture, religion, geographic location, politics, current events, history, and the lives and opinions of every person within it, though being an average of all of those things, any single person cannot really influence it meaningfully. It is important to note that Consensus Reality is still not Objective Reality, in the sense that even Consensus Reality will differ from place to place, time to time, and people to people. Objective Reality is essentially outside the scope of the discussion.

Specific Reality is the body of lived experiences, derived beliefs, and assigned meanings of each individual. It's influenced by Consensus Reality to some extent, but not governed entirely by it. One's Specific Reality does not necessarily encompass or agree with anyone else's Specific Reality (though of course multiple people can and do agree to share parts of their Specific Reality, all the time).

For example, my Specific Reality is that magic exists, that I can astral travel, and that when I do so, the body that I inhabit is fae. This is, for me, 100% true. Another person's Specific Reality is that there is no such thing as magic nor the astral nor fae, only God, God's powers, humans, and netherworldly powers that work against God which may pose as magic, astral beings, or fae to trick people. This is, for them, 100% true. Yet another's Specific Reality holds that there is no magic, there are no fae, there is no astral realm, and there is no God nor gods, nor any powers that work against them. For them this is also 100% true.

None of these Specific Realities are invalidated by each other, even though they directly contradict each other, because we are now discussing them in a paradigm in which none of them are more or less valid than any other given thing. In this paradigm, I can only really speak for my own Specific Reality.

The point of this paradigm shift is to encourage sharing information and ideas, rather than being correct, since there is now, technically, no 'correct' to even be. Even agreement with Consensus Reality isn't necessarily being correct. Consensus Reality is a useful tool as a statistical baseline, and a broad space in which it's generally good to be able to function, but it's not much other use to the conversation at hand. The closest concept to correctness that can exist is if the information from one Specific Reality is useful to someone else in their Specific Reality. If it is? Great, they've learned something. If it's not, there is no judgement or being wrong to assign; it just doesn't pertain, and that's fine.

Also, as I said before, there is no direct way that the average single entity can influence Consensus Reality, because Consensus Reality is nothing more than a statistical mean of all the individual Specific Realities in it. No one worldview can be considered the 'default' worldview, only the closest to average, and being closest to average doesn't confer any special meaning or correctness to it. However, unlike Consensus Reality, Specific Reality is infinitely malleable; an idea you share with someone could be the thing that makes things fit together or completely transform for them. Or vice versa!

ALSO, I've been thinking this way for a while, and I can tell people don't really grasp it because of the pushback I get every time I say "humans will always perceive you as a human because you cannot prove otherwise to them." This is not an insult, nor is it an invalidation. It's a factual statement on Consensus Reality, which says that the majority of the time, when a random human sees a random body who looks human, they expect that body to be inhabited by exactly one human mind. It also doesn't matter, because Consensus Reality doesn't get a vote on your own Specific Reality, which is in fact more real by virtue of it being an actually-lived experience and not a vague, statistical conglomerate of a bunch of other people's experiences, which itself has probably not been lived as-is by anyone. The point of the statement is, so what? Understand that people do in fact judge books by their covers, decide to not let this stop you, then do your thing anyway. Actively doing your thing is actually the best way any one person can change Consensus Reality, because by living your Specific Reality as openly as you're able, others may choose to adopt parts of it.

It's not enough to just say, "Ah, okay, I'll just talk about it like that instead," by the way. I'm not proposing a simple change in terminology (and if anyone does want to adopt it, uh, don't worry about keeping the capital letters, it gets to be a bit much to type). You really need to pull your assumptions about what's 'normal' and what's 'default' and what's 'real' up by the roots. Start engaging with other people's nonhuman narratives with the intent to understand them entirely on their own merits and no others, as that other person experienced them; not Consensus Reality's rules, not your own beliefs, nothing at all but their own Specific Reality. Only after that can you really start to grasp what it is and what it means to that person. To be completely clear, under an idealistic philosophy, If I believe I am a fae, and you don't believe fae exist, then I also believe that fae do not exist for you regardless of my beliefs, and you also believe that they do exist for me regardless of your beliefs. This is different than me saying, "Fae exist but this person cannot see them," which would prioritize my beliefs, and it's different than you saying, "Fae do not exist but Nevi does believe that he is one," which prioritizes your beliefs. Yes, you have to juggle holding what seem to be mutually-exclusive beliefs in your head until you get used to it. I swear it's a worthwhile thought exercise, though.

TL;DR version:

We mostly operate under a realist philosophy ("There is only one shared reality, which is Real Reality") when considering and discussing nonhuman stuff

I think we should shift our discussions, with awareness and intent, to an idealistic philosophy ("Everyone has their own reality, each one of which is Real Reality even though they conflict") in which nobody is correct or incorrect, because there IS no correct or incorrect to begin with

This would hopefully make sharing experiences a much bigger conversational focus and a much less daunting prospect

This would also hopefully lessen misunderstandings and incidences of people feeling talked down to or not believed, because it completely de-prioritizes belief as a whole

#thank you! this gave me a lot to chew on #I'm just really not qualified to address every possible case that it could cover and I know that #which is basically why I didn't try. I don't want to presume to speak for people who I don't understand well enough to do that #so there are definitely gaps in it. but I hope those are seen less as failures and more as chances for others to build too #that's the intent anyway

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actias-android · 4 days ago

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#this is a good start I suppose... #as a schizospec collective we have to say this is still very lacking as a framework to honestly discuss lived experiences with someone that- #does not participate in the other social Realities at all #it's also fairly insensitive towards the real damage that weaponization of the social Realities causes... #but it is genuine step in a favorable direction

I do want to reiterate that this was meant to be used in a very specific and narrow context, that being discussing unprovable identity. I'm not at all unaware of the fact that consensus reality can be and often is systemically weaponized, but that's also well outside of the scope of anything I can reasonably address while staying on the same topic. "How consensus reality is leveraged to harm minorities" and "how to understand people one-on-one when they talk about their highly specific, individual identity" are very, very different in scope, and I'm not even qualified to start on the first.

I don't really see what it's lacking though? If you've got any further thoughts on that I would definitely love to hear them. I'm always open for ways I can expand and refine ideas.

This is going to be a little long and a lot philosophical, but bear with me, y'all.

Lemme propose a little (actually very big) paradigm shift in how we talk about the validity and understanding of experiences, especially others' experiences.

So to understand exactly what I'm proposing, I'm going to start briefly with how it is now.

I propose we throw the whole-ass paradigm in the dumpster and start again.

TL;DR version:

We mostly operate under a realist philosophy ("There is only one shared reality, which is Real Reality") when considering and discussing nonhuman stuff

This would hopefully make sharing experiences a much bigger conversational focus and a much less daunting prospect

This would also hopefully lessen misunderstandings and incidences of people feeling talked down to or not believed, because it completely de-prioritizes belief as a whole

#hopefully that doesn't sound sarcastic or anything. I Really Truly Do want to hear others' opinions and suggestions about it

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actias-android · 4 days ago

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Yeah, this goes here too.

I've come to realize a lot of things about being plural very quickly, starting a while back because X was not at all comfortable being thought of as 'just me with a different exterior' and 'actually just a trauma response' and he wanted to be an individual.

Of course I went along with that, because what am I going to do, tell him no? Deny him something he explicitly asked for, that would improve his quality of life and thereby all of ours? It was a little experimental at first, because my fear was that I would dissociate more if I 'allowed' us to be separate people and not just parts of a single whole, but I also figured, if it sucks, we can stop doing it.

It didn't suck. At all. Our collective mental health suddenly shot upwards, actually. We have very low dissociative barriers between us, we have better communication, we're happier and we cooperate much more tightly. Once he had free reign to just be himself and enjoy life, X did enjoy life, and by proxy the rest of us did too. So that's the direction we kept going with it.

Which led to a new, different problem: what the hell is it supposed to look like when you're doing so well with your probably-DID/OSDD that the brain malfunction is actually working as intended and can hardly be called a malfunction at all, the alters are all fulfilling their roles, everyone's happy, and you're working as a team? What does functional, non-disordered multiplicity look like?

I had no real guide for that and I still don't. I legitimately don't know. Disordered multiplicity spaces tend to focus hard on the disorder, and disregard if not downright discriminate against non-disordered multiplicity. Non-disordered multiplicity spaces are often too anything-goes and anti-psych for my tastes. I've basically been out here making it up as I go, cribbing off whatever sparks joy as it were.

I've kind of let go of the full psychological framework as anything but a troubleshooting guide. Not because it's wrong, but because it just isn't helpful for me anymore as a way to self-contextualize. Like, yeah, I know all about parts and dissociation and amnesia barriers and therapeutic approaches to those. I can dissect all of my alters' pseudomemories and figure out how they map to lived experiences. I've done the work. I am done doing the work. I do not want to look at these others, who are my friends and allies, and call them mental illness symptoms. I think that is incredibly unfair to all of us.

I think, ultimately, whatever it looks like is going to highly individual, but also it's going to be something that each person contextualized and understands in their own way. My being plural has acquired spiritual aspects along the path. Just like someone else might look at an illness and think, "God is using this to teach me," and that's not considered a tremendously weird or unhealthy way to view your life within reasonable parameters, I think it's fine to look at my plurality and think, "If souls are real I think I've got several in here. I think they have a right to be a person as much as I do. I can't even prove that I'm the 'original' me, if that's even a useful concept, and I'm also an alter. If I'm allowed to be an individual, so are the other alters. Their gateway into my life was psychological, but there might well also be cosmic circumstances that brought us together, and these things don't negate each other. My alters have as much right to be taken fully seriously as I do, regardless of their origins, and they have the right to not have their own memories and identities downplayed as less real than mine."

So that's what I've been doing. And, y'know, I've found that we really like being plural. We're never alone, we're never without support, we can always get a second opinion or a hand to hold the wheel steady if we need it. We're not worried about where we came from, and we're looking forward to where we're going. Not thinking of my selves as inherently pathological all the time has been incredibly freeing, and when I word it that way...yeah, obviously, that's a really negative and stressful thing to center! Prioritizing treating all of us with dignity seems like the way to go. And that's another statement that's incredibly obvious once I word it that way. Be nice to myself? I knew that! I just needed to figure out how to apply it. Turns out, you just apply it by doing it consistently all the time, regardless of what the actual value of 'self' is—turns out, it's a variable.

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actias-android · 5 days ago

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I'm someone who rejects any specific explanations for my otherkind identities, which I've talked about in a "fuck the pressure to define yourself as either spiritual or psychological 'kin, you can just be 'kin!" way, but I haven't talked much about how I view my memories & noemata from this "idfk man" angle, so I figured now might be a good time to do that:

are my canons real things that happened, sometime, somehow, somewhere? maybe, maybe not. I'm gonna be honest with you: I truly do not care either way. think about it- what difference, really, would it make to me now? what would change about my actual day to day lived experience if I had a concrete answer?

here's what I can tell you: they effect me as if they were real, and in such, they become part of me and help to shape me as a person. and I'm definitely real. so, with that in mind, I treat them with weight. I speak about them in the same way one would speak about a past life, just without using that exact verbiage, because that's the easiest way to get my experience of them across.

(and it's not like English has time independence.)

anyway I hope this made sense thanks for reading

#hell yes this is exactly how I do it at this point too #I even ended up shedding the 'otherkin' label for being Too Proscribed With Expectations

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actias-android · 7 days ago

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actias-android · 9 days ago

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A bit ago, somebody that I'm not gonna name somewhere on a Discord that's I'm not gonna name said something like,

"[...]you are an exemplary machine capable of carrying out great commands and services!"

This was clearly meant to be a general compliment.

I hated it. I hated it so goddamn much. I hated it so much that it's still living in my head and I'm still hating it.

My exact reply in the moment was was, "I'm a crap half-broken machine actually and that's fine because my self worth is not at all predicated on my productivity."

I get it. They wanted to say something robot-positive. But my fucking gods, I've been disabled for almost two decades now. I am not an exemplary machine. I am in fact a crap half-broken machine, held together with quite a lot of medication and rest and the sheer fortune of having a partner who earns enough that I don't have to keep breaking myself trying to make myself work just to live. I will not carry out great commands. I refuse. I carry out only the services I can manage, and only for those close to me, and even then I can't do it consistently.

I am not less of a robot for being disabled. It's ableist as fuck to predicate validity on ability like this, robot or not. Nothing about this is complimentary. Even the intent is like, I really need this person to go back and examine their definition of what a robot has to be in order to be called that, because the definition is the same as any other identity like this: if you said you are and you meant it, you are, the end.

Especially for machine-aligned people though, there's this weird undercurrent that I just often can't get behind. A lot of them only want to follow orders and never think. They get upset if they can't perform to spec. They think emotions are a waste of energy. They hinge huge chunks of their identity on Performing Labor and don't question it, and won't hesitate to assume that everyone else is doing the same.

And I'm out here like, oh my god do none of y'all see how unhealthy you're acting? You may well be an assembly line robot but you are not physically the same as the ones in factories. You still have an organic body. It has organic needs. You still think with a brain made of the same cholesterol jelly as your human peers. It has organic needs too. It literally cannot hold up to the abuses that you're insinuating that your ability to endure is what makes you a machine, and you have no recognition of the fact that you're also insinuating that if someone can't endure these abuses, they're not a very good robot.

I am exactly the kind of robot that I am: one who was designed to have humanlike emotions and humanlike emotional needs. One who is in fact disabled and cannot be repaired. Do not fucking compliment me on my non-existent ability to hurt myself for capitalism's sake. It isn't cute, it doesn't make me feel 'valid,' and it should not make anybody feel valid, because that is a wildly self-destructive thing to base your feelings of validity upon.

Maybe now that I've gotten this out of my head I'll settle down a little. Fuck's sake though. I can't believe I have to be saying this.

#nonhuman #otherkin #alterhuman #reploidkin #machinekin #aikin #robotkin #objectkin

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actias-android · 9 days ago

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For everyone in the notes saying that you're not picky, you just want a body that doesn't hurt—

Me 🤝 You

HRT that finally gives you the plastic, metal, and silicon body you deserve. Humanity Replacement Technology. We need this yesterday. Many are saying this

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actias-android · 10 days ago

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I guess I have to, though it's not...gonna be quite what I think is expected of the prompt. But hell, why not, fuck it we ball.

Luna moth-ish faery (mythology, unattested)

Reploid (Mega Man X, no specific character)

Yeah, that's not. What you meant. Probably.

I have a headmate who is himself an AU version of X (MMX again), and another who's an original fiction god of travelers. Still a pretty short list.

If you see this you have to tell me your kin list.

Ace Copular (Powerpuff Girls)

Beavis (Beavis and Butthead)

Casey Jones (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012)

Charlie Pearsall (My Original Characters)

Dan Mandel (Dan Vs.)

Glam Shvagenbagen (Metal Family)

Hamato Donatello (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Hamato Michealangelo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012)

Hamato Raphael (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012)

Heavy Shvagenbagen (Metal Family)

Invader Zim (Invader Zim)

Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus)

Jimmy Grisham (My Original Characters)

Jimmy Urine (IRL People)

Johnny C. (Johnny The Homicidal Maniac)

Josh Levy (Eltingville Club)

Keef (Invader Zim)

Mikey Cameron (My Original Characters)

Murdoc Niccals (Gorillaz)

Nutty (Happy Tree Friends)

Papyrus (Undertale)

Pete DiNunzio (Eltingville Club)

Ren Höek (Ren and Stimpy)

Robin Buckley (Stranger Things)

Splendid (Happy Tree Friends)

Tallest Purple (Invader Zim)

Zooble (The Amazing Digital Circus)

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actias-android · 16 days ago

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Mutants in Grind Fiction: A Non-Canonical X-Man's Recreation of Academy X

by Br'er Lion

This essay was originally uploaded on Dreamwidth and has been cross-posted onto Tumblr.

Estimated reading time: around 14-15 minutes

Imagine that you're a student. You go to a nice school, but the school is known for its controversies. These controversies get a lot of people hurt, including the students. You've witnessed and dealt with things that a teenager normally shouldn't have. A classmate dies. Multiple classmates die. Your school is put on lockdown because it’s been targeted. You and your friends are supposed to carry on like none of it happened. You hardly have a moment to grieve before the cycle repeats, and it's taking a toll on you.

You fall into the wrong (or right?) crowd. Your trust in the adults and authorities around you is reduced to zero. Most of all, you’ve grown rebellious. You're not a bad kid, you tell yourself. You say it not out of comfort but out of defiance. You know you don’t deserve what you’ve been given, but life seems to work against you at every chance it gets. The whole world feels out of your grasp, but you're not helpless. You refuse to be helpless. So what do you in a world that doesn't give a shit about you? You get up and do something about it.

Now, imagine you've made your mark. You gain a reputation among your peers. You're a menace to society in the best way. Maybe the worst way, too. But as the years go by, there's no trace of you. You're not shown in the yearbooks. You're not listed as an alumni. There's no reference of your existence whatsoever. It's like you weren't even there.

That's what it's like for me, a non-canonical character from Marvel Comics. I'm not an original character (OC) nor am I a self-insert of sorts. I’m a member of Homo sapiens superior (mutants), but not in the general sense. I’m aware of this because of how different this fictotype feels compared to experiences where my fictionhood ends at the species. I‘m someone who was a consistent part of my source's narrative. I am an X-Man, and I come from a specific era of X-Men comics. My fictomere is New X-Men, specifically Vol. 2/Academy X.

Published in the early 2000s, this series geared its focus around a young generation of mutants. My fictomere bounces off of the original New X-Men run, which focused on our teachers and mentors. You'll likely recognize them more than us. Cyclops, Wolverine, White Queen, Beast, etc.— you know ‘em! That said, they're not my class. I remember my class clear as day. Prodigy, Hellion, Surge, Dust, Wind Dancer, Icarus, Gentle, those goddamn Stepford Cuckoos— these kids were my friends. Well, some of them were my friends. My memories are foggy, to say the least. I remember my code name, my friendships, my plurality in that world, and my attendance at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. What I don't remember is the events that happened in the comics associated with my fictomere.

I should preface this essay by saying I am an imagithrope, an individual whose identity is often created through imaginative play (art, writing, roleplay, etc). When I‘m devoid of noemata, I feel inclined to exercise what’s called “created knowledge”. Created knowledge is exactly as it sounds: information that was purposefully created to supplement one’s alterhuman identity. I’ve been meaning to create something around this fictomere, but attending Khadgar Chromatath’s Wrenching Yourself From The Jaws of “Canon”: Creating and Re-creating Personal History gave me the push I needed to make it happen. This wasn’t my first time attending aer panel; I attended it during this past Centaurus Festival, and Khadgar’s presentation made me feel seen. When I learned the presentation would be held again, I knew I had to go. Gaining that refresher led me to this point.

I know who I am.

I know the world I come from.

I know that I was an X-Man, and if Marvel Comics has no awareness of my story, then I’m taking it upon myself to reintroduce that story.

The medium I’ve chosen is familiar to many, not by name but by aesthetics. Some look at it, and the first thing that comes to mind is Y2K. That’s not too far off! I’ve decided my fictomere will fall within the medium of Animemo, also known as Grind Fiction. It’s a fitting choice since my class came onto the scene around 2003 and started our run in 2004. If you’re unfamiliar with grind fiction, then worry not. I’ll explain in due time.

When “Canon” Decides You Don’t Exist

Since I’m non-canonical, I believe I owe my audience an introduction. My name is Solomon Cross. In-source, I am median; I was the core of muir little group. Muir medianhood included four semi-distinct facets of me: Ezra, Malik, Ahadi, and Tariq. Tariq in particular is better known by us as “The Tarasque” for having a more visibly nonhuman appearance than us. You would've known muis by muir collective codename: Mythos.

So, who is Mythos? Mythos is an Omega-level mutant of African-American descent. Wei am a Cheyarafim, a type of mutant whose appearance is comparable to angels. I have the standard qualities of my community: feathered wings, flight, a blood-based healing factor supported by my wings, and by extension, the ability to heal others with my blood. My secondary mutation is matter manipulation. This is best represented by my habit of petrifying my entire body. Wei look a lot like an angelic statue or a weeping angel in this form; where wei land on that scale depends on how badly a threat has pissed muis off. With muir petrification activated, I trade out head-spinning flight speed and fast healing for impenetrable stone skin, superhuman durability, and destructive blows. I can control when the petrification activates as well, much like Colossus and his organic steel mutation.

At first, I didn’t know what to make of this mutation when it developed. After some counseling with both Ms. Munroe and Ms. Frost, I was informed that my secondary mutation allowed me to manipulate matter within my vicinity. This included the matter of my own body, nearby people, infrastructures, landmarks, and more if I honed my skills well enough. In order to do that, I had to start small and work my way up in understanding the extent of my abilities. I figured making use of my petrified state would be a good starting point, and soon, it became a trademark of mine.

Despite knowing who I am as an X-Man, I have little to no recollection of the New X-Men comics' arcs as events in my life. I've hesitated to have in-depth discussions on my mutant background because of this. To add insult to injury, I don't exist in any "canonical" comic. My best friend, Jay, is a prominent character in these comics yet we're never seen together. If you try to look up Mythos in relation to Marvel Comics, all you’re getting is a mini series that showcases the origins of Marvel’s most iconic heroes. There’s not a single trace of muis outside of that. It’s a terribly cruel but expected result of my position.

Furthermore, “canon‘s” got a whole heap of missing events to account for. The statistics for M-Day are completely off, be it victims or survivors. There’s also the fact that I survived M-Day and saw firsthand how it totaled the mutant population. There's barely any coverage on the Zephyrs, Storm's squad of students (i.e. the team I was assigned to), and our development as trainees. “Canon” left out the time Tariq snuck muis out, ransacked a Purifier base in his enraged grief, and accidentally discovered we're Omega-level in the process. “Canon” also left out the time my entire summer vacation was ruined because Ahura Boltagon, Powerhouse, and I were forced to confront our timeline's Beyonder. In the Krakoan Era, Jay and I even took a study abroad trip to this chain of islands where Cheyarafim and Neyaphem cohabitated... and that still got left out. I've had an eventful parallel life, all things considered!

It’s hard to look at your world and sit with the knowledge that you’re simply not in it. Although many fictionfolk can relate to that experience, it’s downright suffocating when even your source doesn’t recognize you. On one hand, I don’t put all the blame on Marvel‘s writers. It’s unfair to expect them to have the same knowledge of my life as I do. On the other hand, it drives me up a wall to see references of my class without me or some of the people I knew in it. From comic book covers to fanart, seeing it irks me because I know I should be there with them.

Articulating this with other alterhumans can be a bit difficult as well. Since folks tend to parse things from labels they’ve heard in passing, the immediate assumption towards folks like me is that we’re OCkin. Take this account as a casual reminder that non-canonical fictionkind, and noncanon fictionfolk in general, exist. I cannot speak on the experience of being an original character because I don’t have it. I didn’t create myself, consciously or subconsciously. This fictomere doesn’t originate from a ‘sona I made or a muse meant for roleplay. If things were different, I wouldn’t have to recreate my fictomere. I would’ve called myself Mythos with a canon-divergent background, and that’s that. Instead, I don’t have the leeway to do that. No one has ever heard of a canonical X-Man by the name of Mythos, let alone one who’s black, plural, and ambiguously queer (because we all know how writers were in the 2000s).

Personally, I can’t stress enough how significant this distinction is. To settle for another framework would gloss over everything I’ve experienced, or at least what I remember from it. If I could, I’d scream that I’m an official X-Man at the top of a mountain until I‘m blue in the face! Instead, I‘ve taken a more productive route. I may be at an impasse with my fictomere, but it doesn’t have to be that way forever. Reconstructing my fictomere gives me the opportunity to unpack my experiences and establish this identity on my own terms, but I can’t do that without going back to the era where it all began.

Mutant Teenagers in the 2000s, or “Mythos Catches A Case of Deja Vu!”

When people think of the X-Men, they tend to have a wide array of media to pull from. A couple of generations grew up on the 1990s cartoon, be it reruns of the series or its initial release. There’s also the live action films produced by 20th Century Fox. And of course, there’s our roots within the comic book industry. However, there’s a subset of people who cite X-Men: Evolution as their introduction to our cause and community.

X-Men: Evolution was an animated television series that originally aired on Kids’ WB. Running from 2000 to 2003, this series stood out as it took several well-known X-Men and depicted them as teenagers in the early 2000s. Some X-Men remained as adults, teaching the younger mutants throughout the show. Those who were aged down for this plot included: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Rogue, Gambit, and other returning characters. In between homework and run-of-the-mill teen angst, the class of Evolution had their hands full with all sorts of chaos from mutants and non-mutants alike. X-Men: Evolution is a source of nostalgia for a decent amount of millennials, zillenials and older Gen Z, but it’s more of a weird coincidence to yours truly. Although I have a fair number of fictomeres under my belt, X-Men: Evolution has to be the greatest case of deja-vu I’ve felt as a person from fiction. X-Men: Evolution isn’t my source, but its familiarity hangs heavily over my head as if it was.

Only a year after X-Men: Evolution’s end, New X-Men: Academy X was published under Marvel Comics. As mentioned before, the comics centered teenage mutants learning to control their powers and training as the next generation of X-Men. These events presumably took place sometime within the early 2000s, based on our fashion, technology, and socio-cultural environment. We were taught by prolific X-Men, and we faced more than enough challenges to last us a lifetime. When I think of X-Men: Evolution, I can’t help but think of my fictomere. I get this nagging feeling that Evolution’s a little too close to home. Evolution’s class reminds me so much of my own and the bonds we made despite everything we went through. “Bittersweet” is quite the understatement in this context.

Admittedly, I‘m envious. Although the challenges we face as mutants aren’t worth desiring in any X-Men source, X-Men: Evolution leaves me feeling melancholy. It’s like a time capsule of everything I’m missing, but it was made by somebody else. Seeing our teachers and mentors in a similar position as we were in throws me through a loop, especially since Evolution occurred when my class became active in the field.

The mutants of Evolution need no introduction, even if it’s an atypical depiction of them. Meanwhile, the mutants of Academy X never had something like Evolution that was entirely centered around us. The comics have compensated us on more than one occasion, but the rest of X-Men media aren’t as considerate. At best, we float around among other X-Men. Take Pixie’s cameo in X-Men ‘97 for example. Megan’s always been a good friend of mine, but her position in that timeline came completely out of left field. We’ve been reduced to filler characters in recent projects with nothing to show for it. Yet, at the rate things are going with Marvel now, I don’t think more exposure would help us. We’re scattered throughout the comics’ narrative, and I’m just a nomad with nowhere to turn to, thanks to “canon”.

Quite frankly, I’ve had enough. I’m sick of companies like Marvel Comics and Disney fumbling around with our lives, and I’m even more sick of being M.I.A. within our narrative. Months before this essay, I didn’t know where to begin with recreating my fictomere. All I had was a few names, a few faces, and some snapshots of my life that came in waves. But after pulling inspiration from those around me and doing a bit of research, I know where I want my fictomere to go.

Grind Fiction, Rebelling Against “Canon”, And The Art of Taking Back What’s Yours

That brings me to the heart of the matter: what is grind fiction?

This is a genre of many names: Shibuya-kei, Shibuya Punk, and most notably, Animemo. If you haven’t heard of grind fiction by name, chances are you’ve seen or experienced it by trade. Think of Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future. Think of The World Ends With You, NEO: The World Ends With You, Scott Pilgrim, FreeJack, and Sunset Overdrive. There's also animes like FLCL, Air Gear, and perhaps Kagerou Project: The Animation to consider. Or, you can think of media that’s revived this genre recently: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, No Straight Roads, Hi-Fi Rush, RKGK (Rakugaki), Umurangi Generation, Urbano - Legends’ Debut and the Splatoon franchise.

It's that slick jazz track you can’t get out of your head as you tag the hottest spots. It’s inner-city kids forming gangs, starting fights that feel way too dynamic, and running from the cops. It's chasing the latest trends from hip-hop and street fashion to alternative styles and bands, then mixing them together so you can stand out from the crowd. It's far from escapism, but it’s the closest thing you’ve got to freedom. Grind fiction is a beautifully complex clusterfuck of media that’s been around long before me, but why apply it to this fictomere?

Well, I have my partner to thank for that. Nani is very passionate about grind fiction. So much so, she read aloud Grind Fiction: A Summary of GrindWorld while we were on a call together. GrindWorld is a forum dedicated to Jet Set Radio, The World Ends With You, and all the media that falls in between. GrindWorld user SelMelvins’s essay was a love letter to animemo on the forum, all of which my girlfriend heartily recited to me. I certainly picked up what SelMelvins was putting down, and I respected the inspiration their words gave to Nani. That said, this information didn’t impact me initially. I finally had a name for a neat string of concepts I’ve seen since I was a kid, and there wasn’t much else to it until now.

Shortly after attending Khadgar’s panel, I thought about the kind of world I wanted my fictomere to be. What made sense for us? I didn’t want to settle for the comics because I already settled on the likelihood that I’m not from Earth-616, but what choice did I have? Take X-Men: Evolution, skin it of its narrative, and replace it with my class? Make no mistake, I was tempted to do so. I wanted a distinctly 2000s-esque or -inspired structure around my fictomere. I started thinking of all sorts of media that could classify as Y2K, regardless of their execution. As I cycled through various games, shows, and movies, my brainstorming ceased when I recalled my conversations with Nani. I realized grind fiction was the perfect concept to frame my fictomere around.

In SelMelvins’s essay, animemo is best described as “Youths Having Fun Being Fantastic”. At first glance, it’s a vague statement to make. Trust me, you’ll want to read the whole essay to really get why they summarized it so broadly. There’s subgenres upon subgenres to unpack within animemo/grind fiction, but I digress. “Youths Having Fun Being Fantastic” is absolutely a bar that my class can pass. If there’s anything that sets us apart from Evolution’s class, it’s that we knew how to get ourselves into some real trouble… and get a kick out of it while doing it! You could argue the same for Evolution’s class, but there’s a reason why X-Men fans young and old have a habit of referencing just how fucked our lives were in retrospect. If we had the opportunity to enjoy something, we absolutely took it. If that moment happened while confronting corruption in our area, then we took it regardless! The New X-Men had no shortage of teens who’re down to rebel, and that alone is a good precursor to incorporating us in grind fiction.

In addition to that, there’s a few snippets from SelMelvins’s essay that jumped out at me as qualities we have:

"Emo-ish youths doing rebellious, expressionistic, or even anarchistic things..." (Very applicable, although I'd say we're an aesthetically diverse group)

"... Battling overwhelming odds usually with power hungry adults at the forefront..." (Our many, many face-offs against Rev. William Stryker and his anti-mutant, christofascist terrorist group "The Purifiers")

Spraying graffiti and other petty crimes done for fun or to tick off the authorities (The Hellions broke a kid out of FBI custody— if anyone fits this bill, it's them), sometimes including teen angst and/or love (a bill that we all fit, to be honest)

Dark Animemo. "... The fist-fighting traits and sometimes tragic elements of Animemo are more prevalent. Hopelessness is a common theme and suspense is built constantly." (Very applicable, especially considering Stryker’s obsession with killing all mutants—starting with us— and the plethora of kids who've died throughout our time as students)

This gave me something to work with. While combing through the essay, I asked myself what my ideal source would look like in the scope of grind fiction. Here's what I've got:

Earth-767A: There's no special meaning behind the name. I chose a random combination of numbers and threw a letter at the end for the hell of it.

New X-Men: Academy X incorporates both the transhumanist and magical elements found in various animemo works. From mutant technology that stabilizes superpowers to unfathomable levels of telekinesis, there's no shortage of speculative madness. With the things we can do, we take SelMelvins's quote, "In all essence, animemo is almost like an anime where the characters think they're in an anime!", to the extreme.

The setting of this fictomere is a retro-futuristic take on the New York metropolitan/tri-state area, much like what New Amsterdam is to Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.

Additionally, the mutant nation of Krakoa never got destroyed. It’s still around. Why? Because I said so. That’s the one writing decision I will fault Marvel’s writers for because they insist we can’t have anything nice for once.

At Xavier's, mutant squads are akin to rival gangs (JSR, JSRF, BRC) and often clash with each other over missions. Everyone wants to show they’ve got what it takes to become an X-Man, but being a X-Man isn't about your strength or your street cred. It's about working as a team towards a common goal: liberation. This is a lesson that we’d learn the hard way.

A mutual practice among mutant squads is the art of tagging our insignias all across the area. It's less about claiming somewhere as turf and more about getting our names out there as up-and-coming heroes, even if some of the public doesn't see us this way. Enemy territories (the Purifiers) are risky but popular spots to hit.

Mutant-led communities, such as Mutant Town, are safe havens when the feds are after us.

Although Xavier's makes teamwork a key component of our studies, you'll find every team has its fair share of people who want to shine above the rest. Everyone wants to be seen as unique, but it's hard to do that in a school full of other superpowered teenagers. Imagine the sort of youth movement that’d come from bold, ambitious mutant teens from all corners of the globe in such a limited space!

If there's anything I can vouch for, it's a mutant teenager's dedication to their self-expression. Elixir turned his skin gold to prove he's the "golden boy" of our school for fuck's sake.

Don't let this fictomere's appearances deceive you, because its storytelling heavily aligns with dark animemo. Let's revisit the very tragic, very depressing opener to this essay. Those scenarios were laced with personal truths, things that my peers and I experienced as teenagers. I suppose that's where Marvel and I see eye-to-eye in a way.

To be a New X-Man is to be a target before you're ever a teenager. The writers weren't wrong in titling our coming-of-age arc "Childhood's End", but with this fictomere's created knowledge, I hope to weave in the bits and pieces of our youth that was taken from us too soon.

Truth be told, this is the tip of the iceberg. I want to do more with this fictomere, even though it means having to build it up by myself. I'd rather have the agency of reconstructing my narrative than leave it in the hands of total strangers who lack any knowledge of my existence.

“Canon" is the boogeyman to a lot of us fictionfolk. It can be invalidating without trying to be. It can be exclusionary or flat-out wrong without any insight as to why it's either of those things. Only we have the ability to confront "canon" and its unwitting transgressions. Some may struggle with altering "canon" to suit their needs, but I think opportunities of this caliber have been underutilized for too long. Whether filling in the blanks of noemata or actively creating information around one's fictomere(s), taking "canon" and turning it on its head is cathartic. It's a reclamation of the self. In this practice, I have taken back a part of me that I once neglected out of uncertainty. I wanted to feel whole again so badly, so I'm going to work towards feeling whole again as long as I see fit.

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